   Presencia-Opinión / Europa
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| The European Constitution and the Fear of the People Por Benjamín Kienzle (Canal Mundo, 14/10/2003) |
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The EU’s Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), which began on 4 October in Rome, is probably one of the most important conferences for the future of Europe since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which has formed the base of the contemporary international system. The objective of the conference is to elaborate an EU Constitution, which would formally organise and regulate for the first time the overall functioning of the Union as well as the social life of the European citizens. The discussions are based on the draft by the “European Convention” under the presidency of the French conservative politician, Valery Giscard D'Estaing. Although the draft is more elaborated than had been foreseen by many commentators, it still contains fundamental points of weakness. However, the discussions between the governments do not seem to take these points into consideration. The points of weakness appear in all parts of the draft: in the economic and monetary policy, in the foreign policy or in the institutional framework. But the most basic ones can be found in the parts that regulate the participation and in general the power of the citizens. Already the birth of the Constitution itself suffers from democratic deficits: The IGC, which will decide about the Constitution, does not have the sufficient democratic legitimisation, as it only represents the governments of the member states and not the citizens of Europe as a whole. For instance, Spain takes part only in the form of a government that consists exclusively of members of one party. Thus, it neither represents the entire Spanish public opinion nor the large majority of the population in some semi-autonomous regions. Who, for example, represents Cataluña or Euskadi? In principle, this would not be necessarily a democratic deficit, if the IGC discussed an international treaty, in other words, a treaty between governments. After all, the Spanish government represents Spain abroad. However, a European Constitution is not a simple international treaty, but a treaty that creates a supranational entity, which will be the base of the political, social, economic and cultural life in Europe. Consequently, a Constitution must be a treaty between citizens. This means that in a conference, which will decide about a European Constitution, all citizens must be represented. Thus, the election of the members had been the only way to guarantee the democratic legitimisation of the conference and later, of the Constitution. These democratic deficits are reflected in the content of the draft and, very likely, of the very Constitution. Two areas of fundamental problems exist: first, the elections and secondly, the power of the elected. According to the draft, European citizens can only vote directly for the representatives in the European Parliament, whereas the other important organs, the Council of the European Union and the Commission, are not elected. In the case of the Council, which is now similar to an Upper or Federal House in a parliamentary system, the members are not representatives of the member states (nor of the regions) as in the Senate of the United States, but representatives of the governments of the member states. Therefore, they have only an indirect democratic legitimacy. The Commission, which is the de facto executive of the EU, does not even have this legitimacy. The only legitimacy it has is the approval by the Parliament, which, however, cannot elect between different candidates. In other words, it is a legitimisation that is as democratic as the election of “unified lists of candidates” of past political systems. Moreover, as an article in the German magazine Der Spiegel clarifies, the votes of the citizens in different member countries do not have the same value: For example, an Irish MEP represents 285,000 Irish citizens, whereas a Spanish MEP represents 730,000 Spanish citizens. This means that the vote of an inhabitant of Vigo is worth less than half of the vote of an inhabitant of Limerick. However, the most pressing problem is that the organs with the least democratic legitimisation have most power: The Commission has – apart from the possibility of a popular petition for a referendum to initiate a law – the only right of initiative, i.e., only the Commission can initiate laws. In this way, the Parliament is deprived of one of the most basic parliamentary rights – the right of initiative. Furthermore, the Council must approve all laws passed by Parliament, what is tantamount to a veto of the Council in the legislation process. Finally, the members of the IGC do not call for the ratification of the Constitution in a referendum. Although some countries, among them Spain, will hold a referendum to ratify the Constitution, in other countries such as Germany only the national parliaments must ratify it. In conclusion, the democratic deficit of the European Constitution is already evident in its birth process, in its likely content and in its way of ratification: The authors of the Constitution must be really afraid of the people. We can only hope that they do not forget to include the Charter of Fundamental Rights due to their intensive discussions about such important issues as the inclusion of a reference to Christianity in the preamble. |
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Benjamín Kienzle, estudiante en prácticas no IGADI. |
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ÚLTIMA REVISIÓN: 19/10/2003 |
